Re: It Rubs The Lotion On Its Skin: A Thread About Dating

Re: It Rubs The Lotion On Its Skin: A Thread About Dating

Originally Posted by miscorrections

I think with Yelp there's more of a split because there are a TON of social drinkers/alcoholics who simply want an excuse to social drink/be alcoholics and Yelp events are generally an acceptable (and sometimes free/cheap) way to engage in that.

I have an admittedly small sample size, but in my experience when attending official events for Meetup or Yelp, the composition of the group is entirely a function of the type of event it is. For that Yelp dance party thing at Q a couple months ago, the demographic tended to skew college-aged and Sahara-ish, but when I went to a Yelp happy hour and film screening at Northwest Film Forum I was probably the youngest/loudest person there. I had the opportunity to chat with quite a few attendees of the film thing, and there were definitely a bunch of socially awkward folk in the mix. I have been to a couple Meetups over the years, one for a local democratic party canvassing back in 2004 or 2008, and then one more recently for a concert. The political one consisted of go-getter Tracy Flick types, and the music one was a combination of pretty socially awkward people and more outgoing types. I definitely didn't notice that Meetup had significantly more socially oblivious or awkward attendees than the Yelp events.

Re: It Rubs The Lotion On Its Skin: A Thread About Dating

Well, maybe when I tried Meetup four years ago it was more uncomfortable than it is now. It wasn't super popular, so it's not like there were tons of people to socialize with. With Yelp there's always been a larger population and since I was able to sort of pre-screen people via Yelp Talk I've had much better luck meeting reasonably social people and have made some really good friends out of it. (Also - I only tend to go to certain kinds of Yelp events, so I probably have greater success there. Although now I sort of feel like everyone I'm not already friends with is intolerable.)

Originally Posted by bmack86

Has anyone gone on a date with a sandwich recently? What base did you get to? Ham?

Re: It Rubs The Lotion On Its Skin: A Thread About Dating

To be fair, it could also be that I am socially awkward and can get weird around strangers when I'm at a big event with tons of people I don't know, so maybe I'm just interpreting my general nervousness as THEIR nervousness. That's a possibility.

Re: It Rubs The Lotion On Its Skin: A Thread About Dating

Originally Posted by thelastgreatman

It's strange because a meetup group in theory is to get together with other people who are passionate about something. We're passionate about Coachella and concerts. Religious people are passionate about their faith.

There's a difference between being passionate and being one-note. And that's more a problem with the person, not whatever they've aligned themself with.

Originally Posted by thelastgreatman

So what the fuck do you do at an atheism/agnosticism meetup? Sit around and bitch about how dumb religious people are? Then you become no better than religious people who sit around bitching about other faiths and atheists for not believing the same things as you.

You'd do any of the things that are done at any other meetup? You get together to go to a food festival, a concert, go bowling, try some new restaurant or bar, hike a trail, picnic in the park. You talk about whatever the fuck you want to talk about. If you end up talking to someone who can only talk about one thing, no matter what that thing is, you say nice to meet up and go talk to someone else.

A meeting of American Atheists or an atheist conference or a lecture or whatever would be a very different thing and probably not involve casually sitting around drinking beers. Your question seems to be referring to that sort of event.